Molineux hosts latest PGMOL Breaking Barriers

Refresh Sports took PGMOL to Molineux Stadium, the home of Wolverhampton Wanderers FC, for their latest ‘Breaking Barriers in the Community’ session, delivering an interactive event in collaboration with Wolves FC Foundation.

Hosted for a second time by ESPN football reporter Alexis Nunes, a panel consisting of EFL referee Tom Reeves and Barclays Women’s Super League officials Georgia Ball and Aaron Ford gave the audience an insight into their lives and careers, through pictures. The audience, which consisted mainly of young people from Wolves Foundation’s various programmes, key stakeholders from the game and the footballing community in the local area, also took part in a Q&A segment. The Q&A provided an opportunity to ask some of the burning questions they have for Match Officials and dive a bit deeper into how Aaron, Georgia and Tom got to where they are today.

The event was extremely well attended and this was documented in media coverage of the event by Sky Sports News, The Voice Newspaper and Girls on the Ball podcast.

When asked about how she got into refereeing, Georgia remarked she started refereeing at the age of 14 for “a bit of pocket money” but realised “she loved being involved in the game.” As an official, Georgia’s career has quickly gone strength to strength with her being part of the officiating team for the Women’s FA Cup Final last season and recently being appointed as a FIFA Assistant Referee for 2024.

Talking about the event, Tom said, “It’s really great to be able to share our experiences, in terms of what was positive and what we had to do to get to this level. The audience was brilliant with loads of questions and it is great that events like this can be used to help others take up the whistle and progress through the pyramid.”

For more information on how to get into refereeing, click here or search ‘Get into Refereeing’.